The Badlands to Grand Teton National Park (Day 2)

The second stop on my adventure across the west was to end at Grand Teton National Park where all of the campgrounds are first come, first serve.  With day 2 of my journey beginning on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend I knew it was going to need to be an early morning.  So with that in mind, my morning began again before dawn.  I crawled out my tent to the pre-dawn light that is hard to describe (it is not quite dark but not quite yet light), to find bison had wandered into camp for breakfast.  The first was approximately 30-50 feet away from my tent and it was beautiful to see these majestic creatures at such peace.  After breaking camp, I attempted a few pictures, unfortunately they are quiet blurry due to the early morning light and my lack of a tripod to anchor my camera to.

With where the campground is located, you have two options to get back to the main road - continue on the dirt road through the reservation and back to the highway outside of Rapid City, SD or head back into the part and out to the interstate via Wall, SD (home of the famous Wall Drug).  I decided that since I did not get any pictures of the park the night before it would be best to head back into the park to catch the rock formations at their best in the early morning light.  I happened to run into some wildlife along the way (bison and big horn sheep).  Shortly after I shot of few pictures a huge wall of fog rolled into the park limiting vision to less than a quarter mile so it was slow going back to the interstate.

After a quick stop for breakfast and a map check in Rapid City I was off to journey across Wyoming.  When you drive through Wyoming you feel like you have landed on another world or another time in history.  The land in eastern Wyoming is sparsely populated to say the least, I think that the largest town that I passed had a 100 residents max.  It is a high plains environment with prairie grass as far as the eye can see and jutting sandstone rock formations littering the landscape.  You feel so alone and small in this place.  After a brief stop for gas and a few misc. supplies in Cody, WY, I was back on my way - this time into the Wind River Canyon area.  You travel along the river canyon and begin to see the mighty Rockies begin to form around you.  Unfortunately, my views of the mountains and foothills was short lived because I again drove into rain which turned into sleet over the mountain pass into Grand Teton National Park.  I was disappointed that once I reached the valley below the Tetons that they were awash in cloud cover preventing any pictures to be taken.

I then found my way to the Gros Venture campground, the same campground that my family had stayed at during my childhood, set-up camp and finally got to make some real food (prior to this it had been granola bars, crasins and pistachios for the past 2 days) and man was I starving.  Unfortunately, due to the crappy weather I decided to make it an early night and was lulled to sleep by the pitter-patter of rain on the roof of my tent.